inaccessible
/ɪnəkˈsɛsɪb(ə)l
/adjective
1Unable to be reached: a remote and inaccessible cave the city centre is inaccessible to traffic in most places...
- The team of officers will also be able to respond quickly to 999 calls and reach areas inaccessible to vehicles.
- They penetrated ravines and reached precipitous mountain peaks inaccessible to mechanized troops.
- Twelve months ago, the annus horribilis was launched on the spectacular floodwaters which made North Yorkshire inaccessible to all except oarsmen - or so the world was led to believe.
Synonyms
unreachable, out of reach, beyond reach;
cut-off, isolated, remote, in the middle of nowhere, in the back of beyond, out of the way, off the map, lonely, godforsaken;
secluded, sequestered
informal unget-at-able
archaic unapproachable
1.1Unable to be used: such costs would make litigation inaccessible to private individuals...
- Much of this audio was hitherto inaccessible, locked in record company vaults, private collections, archives and radio station libraries.
- Unemployment in South Africa is at 40% and for those individuals, antiretrovirals are just inaccessible.
- Due to rising rates that accompany privatization, electricity has become similarly inaccessible for thousands of families.
2(Of language or an artistic work) difficult to understand or appreciate: ‘High’ culture is largely inaccessible to the masses...
- We continue to sign collective agreements that are generally written in complex and inaccessible language.
- Sure Godard's work is inaccessible, but at least he's not trying to force feed emotion to the masses.
- Positivism, by example at least, also molds the position of sharp critics such as deconstructionists, whose inaccessible language is a measure of their distance from the public.
Synonyms
esoteric, obscure, abstruse, recondite, recherché, arcane, rarefied;
cerebral, intellectual;
elitist, exclusive, pretentious, snobby, snobbish
3(Of a person) not open to advances or influence; unapproachable: her unassailable, inaccessible image...
- He'd heard about the Nuba and he wanted to find them, but they were very inaccessible.
- He is as incomprehensible as he is inaccessible.
- They are polite to the ‘English’ but inaccessible and unapproachable; they don't take photographs and frown on others photographing them.
Derivatives
inaccessibility
/ noun ...- Their relative isolation and inaccessibility has helped to entrench them in their attitudes and traditions.
- Shakespeare was an experimental writer whose business was ‘to present character in all its inaccessibility, in language at least as opaque as necessary’.
- Returning through the main door, I remarked to the duty porter that it was a shame about the inaccessibility of the pretty gardens that flank each side of this principal entry to the wards.
inaccessibly
- Literature allows an opening into our place - into elements of our lifeworlds inaccessibly buoyed, submerged darkly and refracted just out of our reach.
- It has crisp, golden crackling and tender, juicy meat, is easy to cook and easy to serve, and is neither intimidatingly large nor inaccessibly expensive.
- The Inland Sea is a shallow saltwater lake with a swim-through 150m long to the outer and inaccessibly steep cliffs.
Origin
Late Middle English: from French, or from late Latin inaccessibilis, from in- 'not' + accessibilis (see accessible).